Pete Rose

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While visiting the hall of fame for a particular sport one would expect to see exhibits, busts, and plaques showcasing the most significant people and various record-holders in the sports history. Thus to the casual observer it may come as a quite shock that the baseball player with the most hits in baseball history is absent from it’s Hall of Fame. The Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York contains no mention of the game’s career hit leader because Pete Rose, he of a record 4256 career hits, had been permanently suspended from the game of baseball since 1989. (Rychlak, 1998) On August 24, 1989, Bart Giamatti, the commissioner of the MLB (Major League Baseball) suspended Pete Rose indefinitely for betting on the game of baseball. (Higgins, 1990) Of the reasons for his indefinite suspension, perhaps the most disturbing was Rose’s alleged gambling on games featuring the Cincinnati Reds, a club that he had been managing at the time of his banishment. (Chass, 1989) For the first 15 years of his indefinite suspension Rose would vehemently denied any and every accusation of him having ever bet on baseball, only to finally admit to having done so in his 2004 autobiography My Prison Without Bars. (Dodd, 2004) Pete Rose will not be able to enter the Baseball Hall of Fame until his indefinite suspension ends because the Executive Committee that runs the hall of fame prevents suspended players from appearing on ballots that are sent to the voters at the Baseball Writers Association. (Rychalak, 1998) Baseball’s hesitancy to honor someone who had put it’s credibility at a serious risk is understandable but Rose’s impact on the game of the baseball is so substantial that it’d be a travesty for him to not eventually have at least some ...

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...ry of Icons, Idols, and Ideas. ABC-CLIO.

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Rose, P., & Kahn, R. (1989). Pete Rose: My Story. Macmillan Publishing Company.

Rychlak, R. J. (1998). Pete Rose, Bart Giamatti, and the Dowd Report. Miss. LJ, 68, 889.

Sokolove, M. (2005). Hustle: The Myth, Life, and Lies of Pete Rose. Simon and Schuster.

Wulf, S. (2013, August 14). Pete Rose doesn't deserve sympathy. ESPN. Retrieved February 1, 2014, from http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/9567607/pete-rose-deserve-sympathy-softening-line-ban

Pete Rose timeline. (2004, January 6).Cincinnati.com. Retrieved February 1, 2014, from http://reds.enquirer.com/2004/01/06/red1timeline.html

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